King Francis I of France and the Renaissance The Florentine Renaissance of the Fifteenth Century was slow to move up into continental Europe where a rich Mediaeval architectural and artistic heritage still dominated society. Monarchs were slow to adapt new styles of art, architecture and culture, although they were enthusiastically participating in the scholarly rediscovery of the Classical past by studying ancient languages and collecting rare manuscripts. Things speeded up dramatically with the invention of printing in the 1460s and this new access not only to Classical literature, but the Bible itself, would lead to cataclysmic changes in the religious life of the countries and territories that made up the…